Thursday, March 10, 2016

Blogging for Thor: Salty Colors

I've been wondering for a while if you can apply chromoskedasic chemistry to alternative process prints. It turns out that, yes, you can. Chromo chemistry will affect salt prints.

Now, before all you Spiders get excited and scurry off, the chromo chemistry tests are so far not terribly dramatic. The activator (potassium hydroxide) definitely seems to have restored some of the redder tones in the print. I applied activator to the leaves in different ways. Stabilizer, so far, has very little effect. It's buffered fixer. The stabilizer was applied roughly to the negative space of the image.

All these results should be taken with a note: the print I tested on is probably one of the worst examples I could have used. Chromo chemistry works best on un-exposed highlights, and these prints are super solarized photograms. There are no highlights left.

So this weekend I'll be doing a regular salt print to test chromo chemistry on. It'll be interesting to see what happens with that.

Also, I decided to see what happens after sunlight and time are applied to a chromo-salt print. So I have this print soaking in a dilute solution of stabilizer and activator, sitting in a metal foil tray, next to a window. I'll check it for changes tomorrow!

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